Dallas Mavericks Blog

Yi scores first three points as a Maverick

Yi Jianlian got in his second game as a Maverick and scored his first points _ and it happened to be against the team that drafted him No. 6 overall in 2007.

Yi noted that most of the players are gone from the Bucks organization for which he played just one season before getting traded to New Jersey. Friday night, the crowd chanted Yi’s name when he entered the game and again when made a 16-foot jumper with 4:27 left, giving Dallas a 99-69 lead.

“It feels great,” Yi said. “It’s very exciting to be on a championship team, a great team, the Mavs, playing on the court with all the best players in the league.”

For most of his NBA career, Yi has played power forward. But Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said most of Yi’s minutes will come at center, though he also will have to learn the power forward role.

“With big guys like that, sometimes it takes them a while to kind of catch their groove and get in the right situation,” Carlisle said. “Our hope is that this can be a good situation for him. We’re looking as a franchise to get some young assets on this team.

“He’s only 24 years old, which is hard to believe because we’ve been hearing about him for such a long time. That’s like nursery school in the NBA, in terms of the youth aspect of it.”